05.16.12
Re-read: White, right wing and paranoid
I put a couple things I did earlier in the week together as a longish rant at Globalsecurity.Org
Can you tell I’m really sick of these people?
Lie again, break arm. Not kidding.
Combined it’s a good read on another aspect of how f—– up things are. Spread it around.
The illustration is mine. I have a larger version, hidden in the welter of the hard drive.
As you may know I’m a big fan of Watchmen.
And I particularly like this piece from the old blog, which hasn’t dated much:
What would Rorschach do?
In the 1985 NYC world of the Watchmen, Rorschach only dealt with the city’s underbelly. His favorite activity was putting the squeeze on ex-felons at Happy Harry’s and beating to death those he ran across in the act of perpetrating violent crime. One scene from the comic shows him readying his cravat for use in strangling someone interrupted while raping a woman in an alley. When Rorschach finally comes to blows with a ‘better class’ of person, Veidt, he is easily defeated. Refusing to compromise on his black and white sense of right and wrong, he’s put to death in the snow at the bottom of the world by Dr. Manhattan.
So it’s hard to know what Rorschach would think is right for Wall Street. Because he avidly reads The New Frontiersman, a raggedy-ass newspaper from the extreme right, he would not be sympathetic to over-compensated business executives.
Since Rorschach’s sense of morality defined him, compelling him into the streets to destroy the wicked without mercy or hesitation, it is inspiring to think of what he might do to the shadowy bonus recipients of Wall Street. Would he throw one down an elevator? Handcuff another to a stanchion in an apartment, leave a hacksaw within reach, and set the room ablaze with gasoline? Would he “put fourteen in the hospital needlessly” while squeezing the name and address of their boss from them? Would he crush one of their skulls out of sight in the men’s room?
In the United States, it has not yet come to that. However, if the men of Wall Street are seen to be beyond punishment …
On the other hand, Rorschach had no fondness for liberals or others thought to be soft and morally ambiguous, those he thought equally responsible for the collapse of the alternate history 1985 America in Watchmen. He could be just as likely to take a look at the toxic decay foaming up out of the gutters of Wall Street, threatening to drown everyone not at the top and upon hearing screams for help, just whisper, “No…”